Last updated
16 December 2003

Three years ago, Stacey Payne was facing seven years in jail for cumulative
charges of drug use, possession and intent to sell.

Payne was a college student living in Southern California managing a restaurant
and married. But to distract her from her "freakin' problems," Payne
said, she used cocaine and methamphetamines.

"I got into a world I never knew existed," she said.

She spent her mother's money and racked up a criminal record with items that
will never be erased. She's gone through many drug rehabilitation programs,
but always reverted back to her drug use -- even during the same day she left
the courtroom.

But faced with seven years in jail, Payne's family researched for a better
program -- one that will make a difference. They found Narconon.

The Narconon drug rehabilitation program is a nonprofit worldwide organization
that focuses around residential physical and educational drug rehabilitation.
Narconon students spend about four months bringing their bodies physically
out of drug dependency, working on cognitive skill and eventually learning
basic life management skill through a series of books, class work and counseling.
After leaving the facility, they have to spend the next six months surviving
the "real world" with a weekly check-in to Narconon.

It was founded in 1966 where fundamentals to the program were developed by
author and founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.

Payne's mother, Amy Rossman, said it was Narconon's high success rate that
made it the best option for Payne. Narconon's program today, has almost an
80 percent success rate of men and women, young and old, who have changed
their lives without the use of drugs.

Payne went through the program and finally succeeded in kicking her drug
habit. She proved to the judge that jail time was not necessary.

Today Payne is running the Placerville Narconon program. It's been two-and-a-half
years since she began with Narconon as a student and today, at 39, she helped
put a 15-bed facility in Placerville. It's an expansion of the Northern California
facility in Watsonville.

Payne was given a drawing of the Placerville location without any dimensions
and was told to make it livable. Payne took an old senior care facility off
of Wiltse Court, and turned it into a location where Narconon students can
finish off the remaining months of their program.

The facility has been operating since June and has graduated 26 students.

Sitting in her leather chair that matches her executive desk in her private
office, Payne wouldn't have ever thought she be where she is today.

"[The Narconon program] gives you that inner confidence," she said.

Payne said she loves the Placerville location and enjoys bringing the students
to Sly Park Lake, bowling, the movies and even Tahoe when they're not studying.

In the future, Payne wants to expand a Narconon program to an adolescent
restricted facility. She said she wants to help youth and their parents so
that they may never go through what she and her family went through with her
drug addiction.

As for a mother of a Narconon student, Rossman said, "I think it's a
good program. It saved Stacey's life and for that I'm forever grateful."